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33,333% of your RDI of Sebby
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vorpal
Sebastian (塞巴斯蒂安) / 饒漢文 |
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Mon, Jan. 28th, 2013 05:58 am
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So, this year has been interesting so far for the following reasons: - PhD finally done after forever. Completely, 100% done. Before I was often on the verge of being done but there was one thing left to do or one checkpoint that remained that depended on the schedules of other people. Now my thesis is published and finished.
- Still ploughing ahead with Mandarin, which is pretty much the focus of my life when I'm not watching TV, working on research type stuff, or spending time with friends. Progress is annoyingly glacial, which I hear is very common at the upper-intermediate level for most people.
- For variation, I started learning Classical / Literary Chinese, which is the form of written Chinese that was used from about 600 BCE to 1900 CE or so. It's helping me better understand Chinese characters, since most of the same characters are used today (only in somewhat different ways), and it's allowing me to expand my knowledge of Chinese culture, history, and literature, which is awesome.
- Spending way too much time arguing with buttfuck homophobic retards on YouTube. January resolution: stop doing it, since it stopped being fun and entertaining about two hours after I started.
- Still unemployed *ugh*, but there are now some extremely interesting possibilities that have come up and found me. I'm not going to go into details until I have more information or they become definite things, but I'm feeling very optimistic, which is nice after months of feeling horribly depressed over the difficulties I was having even generating interest when last time I tried to find a job, I couldn't turn down job offers fast enough :/.
- Rekindling some friendships that much need to be rekindled. Another massive highlight.
That pretty much sums things up over here. How is the apocalypse (i.e. post Dec 21, 2012) treating you?   
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vorpal
Sebastian (塞巴斯蒂安) / 饒漢文 |
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Thu, Nov. 29th, 2012 02:37 pm
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Does anyone else here find serial killers incredibly fascinating? Ever since the Luka Magnotta story, I can't stop watching documentaries about serial killers. I'm not sure exactly what the allure is - I think it may be that they're so far outside my sphere of emotional comprehension and they're so twisted that hearing about them is like a real life horror story, especially given that many of them are married with kids, and when their families hear what they've done after they've been arrested, the families are utterly shocked and in disbelief. That is the creepiest part by far, IMO. My absolute favourite serial killer is 33 year-old gay Dean Corll (aka the Candy Man because his family operated a candy company), who, with his two teen boy accomplices David Brooks (18) and Elmer Wayne Henley (17), kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered at least 27 teen boys in a nightmarish story that has come to be called the "Houston Mass Murders": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFPCYTCSN9sCorll would pay Henley and Brooks $200 for every boy they brought to him to rape, torture, and kill. Henley participated in the murders, and then the three of them would together bury the bodies. Gross police negligence and misconduct allowed Dean to run about murdering without consequence, despite the fact that many of his victims were brothers in the same family. It was assumed that his victims had just all became runaways. What's even more horrific about this case is that before Dean could be caught or even have any suspicion cast on him, he was shot by Henley, so in a sense, he never paid any price for the atrocities he committed. Corll was the most prolific serial killer in American history at the time of his death in 1973. He was the inspiration for the ghastly John Wayne Gacy (a clown who killed 33 teen boys) and Robert Berdella (a twisted fuck who murdered eight teen boys after sometimes torturing them for weeks in the most horrific ways imaginable). However, for some bizarre reason - possibly because he was never brought to justice - Corll is largely unknown by Americans (unlike, say, Jeffrey Dahmer, who is notoriously famous for his crimes).
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vorpal
Sebastian (塞巴斯蒂安) / 饒漢文 |
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Fri, May. 4th, 2012 02:30 pm
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- Has anyone here watched the new HBO show, Girls? I just adore this show, which I think is hilarious, with characters that are so wonderfully quirky and distinct from one another, and much more representative of the current 20somethings than Sex and the City ever was of any generation of women. (SaTC was a fun show that I enjoyed thoroughly, but I never found it particularly realistic in terms of its portrayal of people.)
I can't believe that only three episodes of Girls have played... I already feel incredibly attached to and invested in the characters, and it's hard to believe that those feelings have developed in such a short space of time, when usually it takes almost a season for me to feel that way.
It also doesn't hurt that the two most prominently appearing male characters are SUPER FRACKING HOT beyond belief, and in their 20s, thus making me feel much less ephebophilic than my usual perverted self! *does the happy niveau boni dance!*
- Do you have a guilty pleasure? If so, what is it? While I absolutely loathe 99% of reality TV (especially American reality TV - I find Australian and New Zealand reality TV much less trashy and almost documentaryesque instead of a drama-rama-rompfest), I am hopelessly addicted to any and all shows about hoarders, the hoardier the better. Nothing says good TV like someone who doesn't know how many cats live in their house, only to find a dessicated leg sticking up from a two foot deep pile of cat feces.
- Has anyone here heard of the bullshit that is "Indigo children?" (See Wikipedia.) IMO, an "Indigo child" = a kid with a stupid parent. People believing in this indigo child crap just want to believe that they're special and unique, like everyone else.
- Lately, on the day off I take off every week (since we're on a mad dash to finish my PhD, I work six days a week), I love to laze around and read about paranormal stuff (particularly UFOlogy) on Wikipedia. While I am fascinated by some of the stories, I am highly skeptical and believe that 99-100% of them are hoaxes or explainable without having to resort to extraterrestrial influence. I sincerely hope that there are extraterrestrials out there (I can't see how there wouldn't be, based on the size of the visible universe), and I like the idea of having been visited by them, but I strongly believe that if they do exist, it is likely that they would be so dramatically different from us that they would be incomprehensible to each other, and possibly not even recognize each other as life. That being said, the grey aliens from Zeta Reticuli are fun to think about all the same.
- Latest video that has creeped me the FUCK out:
YouTube - Strange "Stick" Creatures Caught by Video Surveillance
*shivers his timbers*
P.S. - See? I'm not always in the throes of despair despite my vast majority of LiveJournal posts indicating the contrary :D.
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vorpal
Sebastian (塞巴斯蒂安) / 饒漢文 |
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Fri, Apr. 20th, 2012 05:34 pm
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When I was in the third grade, we were forced to eat our lunch at our desks, and after 20 minutes or so, we were allowed to go outside to play. The student in front of me, who I will never forget, ate an egg salad sandwich for lunch every day. Why, I do not know, because the sandwich never agreed with his stomach and he would spend the entire afternoon passing gas, more or less right in my face, that reeked of egg salad in various stages of digest. It was so distressing to me to be trapped behind him for three hours every afternoon smelling this over and over again (literally dozens of times), that finally my parents had to step in and speak to the teacher to have my seat moved, as she had been wholly unsympathetic to the pleas of an eight year old. But for about five months, that seat had been my own personal hell. By a rough calculation, I am sure I easily inhaled over a thousand of his eggy expulsions (various puns intended).
I will never, ever be able to eat egg salad, and the mere smell or sight of it is enough to turn my face green, 26 years later.
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vorpal
Sebastian (塞巴斯蒂安) / 饒漢文 |
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Sat, Feb. 11th, 2012 04:16 pm
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Seriously, looking back on this LJ, it seems like the only feeling I feel is depression, which is SO not the case. I'm happy most of the time, but for some reason, the only time I feel compelled to post is when I'm down. I'll strive to make some happier posts AFTER today, I promise :D. For now, however:
Having one of 'dem stupid days where although life is going pretty damn swell, I feel absolutely in the deep throes of inconsolable depression and dread, like everything is about to spontaneously go wrong and reality will collapse in upon itself. Yuck.
Because of this, despite the fact that I was eager to get loads of work done today, I am having tremendous trouble getting motivated to do more than put a dent in the TV shows I'm currently watching, when I should be marking assignments and studying Chinese. Grah!
If anyone has an emotional life preserver handy, and / or any spare cyberhugs kicking around, send one my way? It couldn't hurt.
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vorpal
Sebastian (塞巴斯蒂安) / 饒漢文 |
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Sun, Jan. 15th, 2012 06:24 pm
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No idea what's wrong with me today, but I feel so depressed that I'm basically dysfunctional... On all accounts, I should theoretically be happy; life is pretty good on most fronts, but for some reason I feel absolutely crushed, devastated, and like a colossal failure on all fronts. *sigh* I'm not sure if it's a touch of seasonal affective disorder, but I sure as heck would like it to go away.
More than anything, I'm feeling rather unloved (which makes no sense, because I'm fortunate enough to have great friends and family). If you have any cyberlove / cyber hugs to spare and wouldn't mind sending some my way, they would be very much appreciated.
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vorpal
